Chapter Three: Personal
Self-Development and Community
Overview
Each person is unique and responsible for their own actions. What we do shapes both our inner life and our future choices. Strong individuals help build strong communities, and strong communities support individuals. Personal growth—which for many people includes spiritual growth—is key to creating positive social change.
Having good character matters. The Minnesota Character Council says:
A person's character consists of values and habits which shape behavior. A person of good character is trustworthy, responsible, and concerned with the well-being of others. Good character consists of healthy self-awareness, positive self-management, insightful social awareness, and the ability to establish and maintain healthy and rewarding relationships.
People with good character avoid being selfish, but they don't sacrifice themselves either. They take care of themselves so they can better care for others.
The Problem
Today's society pushes people to focus too much on themselves while making it harder to care for others. It encourages us to:
Climb social ladders
Control those below us
Submit to those above us
Give in to social pressure
This makes many people obsessed with what others think about them. There are also many countervailing forces and institutions that promote community, cooperation, and altruism, but the dominant pattern is the promotion of individualism and competitive behavior.
Alain de Botton explains in his book Status Anxiety:
One's value and importance in the eyes of the world is awarded based on financial success.... We worry that we are failing to meet society's ideals of success and that we might lose respect and dignity as a result. We worry about being too low on the social ladder or about falling lower.... How we see ourselves depends too much on what others think of us.... our position depends on what we can achieve.
In the business world, women often feel pressure to give up their natural way of working in favor of a more aggressive "masculine" style. Working mothers who become law partners are often criticized by coworkers as bad mothers and poor role models.
David Brooks writes that when people feel their status dropping, they might:
Retreat to their tribal groups
Focus on past glories
Build up resentment toward rivals
Lash out with terrible violence
Writer Vivian Gornick notes, "Humiliation stays in the mind, the heart, the veins, the arteries forever. It allows people to brood for decades, often twisting their inner lives."
Meanwhile, many people stop caring about what's moral. They start to believe that right and wrong are just opinions.
Too much competition, extreme individualism, and the rushed pace of modern life make it hard for people to really listen to each other. Conversations become people taking turns talking without hearing each other. Deep, meaningful talks are rare. Many struggle with being arrogant and judgmental toward others.
As opportunities for economic advancement decrease, people feel more:
Frustrated
Hopeless
Disrespected
Resentful
These feelings fuel tribalism, anger, bullying, and the desire to control others—including political opponents, immigrants, and people of different races.
In the play A Streetcar Named Desire, Stanley says:
Don't ever talk that way to me! "Pig—Polak—disgusting—vulgar—greasy!"—those kinds of words have been on your tongue and your sister's too much around here. What do you two think you are? A pair of queens? Remember what Huey Long said—"Every man is a King!" And I am the king around here, so don't forget it!
Solutions
Many people are looking for new ways to live. In an article called "The Age of Anti-Ambition," Noreen Malone writes, "When 25 million people leave their jobs, it's about more than just burnout... A lot of people don't like what they see."
We don't have to find our self-worth by comparing ourselves to others while we:
Run the rat race
Climb social ladders
Try to get ahead of others
Personal growth requires deep change. The desire to control others and the willingness to submit for personal gain are deeply rooted in us. Being honest, facing reality, and cutting back on distractions are essential. Recognizing when we're stuck can be the turning point toward a new life. When we look deep inside ourselves, we can discover we're connected to all life and every human being.
In his book Thinking, Fast and Slow, Daniel Kahneman summarizes decades of research and encourages readers to strengthen "slow thinking" to better manage "fast thinking." Being rational takes discipline, practice, and effort. When we're overconfident, we can fail. Being humble about how we sometimes make irrational choices can help us make better decisions in the future.
Controlling our emotions, instincts, and biases can be difficult — like trying to steer an elephant. Jonathan Haidt wrote: "The emotional tail wags the rational dog." However, emotion and reason can work together rather than being in conflict. Emotions often provide valuable information that can guide rational decision-making in positive ways.
Unconditional love, including compassion for those who oppose us, is freeing. "People need to know how we change and are changed when we love," writer bell hooks says. "It is only by showing love's transformative power in our daily lives that we can assure those who are afraid that commitment to love will save them, a way to experience salvation."
Over two million people have signed the Charter for Compassion. Its vision is to help create a transformed world where all life flourishes with compassion. Its network supports a growing global movement to create change at all levels by connecting, developing, and encouraging networks of compassionate action.
Members of the Bottom-Up Community can take care of themselves to better care for others. Most people want to be better, less judgmental, and more compassionate. With a commitment to controlling or undoing the dominate-and-submit programming (which has manifested itself in a diversity of social arrangements across cultures and over time), members can work on improving themselves (alone and with others).
This requires balancing self-care and care for others. Self-care methods (including spiritual practices for those who choose this path) such as good nutrition, exercise, relaxation, improving rational thinking, connecting with nature, and finding healing through music can help.
"I can't change the world until I change myself" is often self-centeredness that becomes a never-ending excuse for avoiding the hard work of collective social change. For example, "fat-shaming" comes from the weight-loss industry's influence. Becca Rothfeld argues:
We almost certainly cannot change our feelings without changing the institutions that support them. Flanagan may be right that emotions are tied to culture—but we will still have to change a culture to change the emotions it creates. How effective can a personal effort really be when the shame machine keeps grinding?
Alissa Bennett wrote:
Even the "healthiest" form of shaming is a request to conform that comes with a threat of rejection. The basic "us" versus "you" division behind even the mildest shaming always stands in the shadow of hierarchy.
We can't create widespread personal growth without changing the world. Band-Aids can stop bleeding, but it's better to prevent the wound in the first place. A commitment to social change gives people a sense of purpose that helps them endure hardship. Trying to change the world changes you. Increased self-awareness, self-examination, and self-discipline lead to positive changes that affect others, which strengthens the Bottom-Up Community and improves the chances for major, fundamental change.
Personal Growth and Respect for Others
Through it all, we need to honestly look at ourselves. "Know thyself," as the early Greek thinker Aristotle said. Look deep inside yourself, where you'll find your connection to all life and all people. Be clear about your basic values (what you believe is right and true) and your basic principles (the rules that guide your behavior based on those values). Make sure your actions match your words. In other words, practice what you preach.
It's also important to support freedom of choice – both for ourselves and others – moving toward taking care of ourselves while getting help when we need it. Ralph Waldo Emerson encouraged us to live as we would like others to live – while hoping they do the same. We can do this with mutual respect, avoiding forcing others, manipulating them, or having hidden reasons for our actions, which hurt people's ability to make their own choices.
We should only use force to stop physical harm. When we need to restrain people and perhaps put them in jail, ideally, we should still respect their minds and feelings. If we punish them, we can limit the punishment to taking away their freedom. We can hope that during their time in jail, they will learn, grow, and become better at making good choices – the same thing we're trying to do ourselves. Unfortunately, however, current jails and prisons fall far short of this ideal.
This approach fits with our basic values that are based on caring for all people. We may belong to many groups and work to help others in those groups, such as our country, but these groups don't mean we're not part of the human family. Whatever else I am, I'm always human, and the less free you are, the less free I am. Though there are situations where one group's narrowly defined immediate gain might come at another's expense, in the longer term, the better you do, the better I do.
Trying to change others or convince them to accept your values rarely works; it often backfires. People put up walls and protect their right to form their own beliefs. You might share something meaningful that inspires them to think differently, and your good example might lead to change. But in the end, it's best for each of us to work on our own growth while learning from others and sharing what we learn in ways that help others who are doing the same.